Hollow Victories
by thespectatorion
Summary: Movieverse. Ryuuk watched L a little closely for L's comfort. LxLight implied.


Movieverse, in which L wins through a complicated series of events culminating in him writing his own name down just so that Light wouldn't, and then Ryuuk writing in Light's name like in the manga. L survives for another 23 days, but Light dies.

* * *

"You're a funny one."

L's head snapped up, so fast that it hurt. He regarded the grinning creature standing across from him with cold dark eyes and wondered if the shinigami knew what he was thinking. L didn't think the shinigami was a mind-reader, but...

He ought to relax. He was paranoid.

"I pride myself on being odd. What prompted that statement?"

Ryuuk only snorted with chuckling laughter.

L stared at his own toes, occasionally flexing them. There was cake, sugar cubes, and tea on the coffeetable, and he decided to drink the tea and save the cake for later. He stacked a few sugar-cubes on the clear glass-top coffee table, ate the top cube when it was clear the tower was going to fall over, and dumped the whole thing into a small cup of tea. When it had all completely dissolved, he glanced up at the shinigami again, careful to control his expression.

"Mr. Shinigami, if I may ask, why are you still here?"

L always found it beneficial to be the tiniest bit childish. It was better to be underestimated. So, despite the fact that he knew the shinigami's name, he would continue referring to him as _Mr. Shinigami_, because it made him sound younger.

"You have my notebook."

L's mouth made a round _o_. "So you can't leave unless I give this back to you?" L pinched the notebook and held it up in front of his face, just barely in front of his nose. He scanned it again, trying to find something. Anything to keep from thinking about who the notebook had belonged to, but it wasn't like he could help it anyway. He imagined that for the next 23 days, there would be only one thing on his mind. One person.

"Well, I could, but I figured I might as well stick around with you guys for a while. You humans are interesting. In general. You're a weird one, though. Fun to watch. How do you say it again? Oh, yeah. You were in _loooove_."

L dropped the notebook, and pretended that he had done it on purpose, though he doubted that the shinigami missed anything. Evidently, the shinigami noticed his discomfort, because he continued with the same subject. Were all shinigami like this? No, L realized, the Rem one was different. So shinigami were like people. And Light just happened to have been given a Deathnote by a sadistic one who liked to play mind games.

Well. _That _description was familiar.

"Only natural, really. From what I can tell." Ryuuk was making fun of him, laughing- L didn't like to be made fun of, but it was all part of being underestimated.

"...'That so?"

"Yeah. All the girls he ever talked to practically idolized him. And he used it to his advantage. Flirted with them all. Not with you, though. So why? I don't get it. Some shinigami have fallen in love, but it's not very common. I haven't. Maybe that's why I don't understand."

"Were the shinigami ever human?"

"Yes. But we don't remember it."

"What happens when humans die?"

Ryuuk shrugged.

"Sometimes they become shinigami. Sometimes they go to Heaven. Sometimes they go to Hell. Sometimes they go to Nothingness. Sometimes they do... other stuff."

"Like what?" He realized he wasn't going to get an answer when Ryuuk grinned.

"Bugs you, doesn't it? Well, I'm not going to tell you."

"Why not?"

"You sure ask a lot of questions."

"That's because it's my job to get the answers."

Ryuuk chuckled.

"So, kid, why'd you do it? Why'd you fall in love?"

He didn't really feel like lying and saying he hadn't, or like answering the question, so he didn't say anything.

The shinigami shrugged. "I'm just curious. You humans are an interesting bunch. I want answers, too."

"It'd be fair of me to give them to you, now, wouldn't it?"

"...You're not going to tell me that the universe isn't fair."

"No."

"So you're going to answer my questions? You should, I answered some of your questions, so it'd be fair. What with you being all about justice and all."

L shrugged. "No. I just like to win."

Ryuuk laughed, but this time it wasn't a dry chuckle, but a loud belly laugh. If shinigami even had stomachs- well, they ate apples, so they must have.

"So all of that? Just a game?"

L nodded. "We're a game to you, aren't we?"

"You're saying we're similar?"

L shrugged. "It could be taken that way, I suppose. Drawing parallels, more like."

"Even then, you're not going to answer my questions?"

"You didn't answer all of the questions I asked."

"Ah, that's different. I'm not allowed to. As in, severe punishment. So, no, thank you. But you wouldn't be severely punished if you told me why you were in love with-"

"Please don't say it like that."

"Why not?"

"Amane Misa was in love with Yagami Light. It wasn't like that. Not... fanaticism, not like- like puppydog enthusiasm."

L winced. This was unlike him.

But he hadn't thought of it as being in love, and he'd been almost confused upon being confronted with those words for it. He hadn't thought of it like that. Not in so many words. He hadn't really thought of it as anything. It had just... _been _there, one day, in the middle of a snide exchange, he'd looked down at Light and thought, _oh. This is new_.

He hadn't even known he was gay.

But he'd gone on with the investigation. Gone on with his life. Acknowledged it for what it was- just something he felt, just a chemical imbalance in the brain. Tried not to let it affect him too much, though it almost made him want Light to be Kira _more_. Like there was something- something romantic, he guessed, in feeling that way about your archenemy. But he didn't like those words. And they'd never even been friends- well, maybe during that time when Light seemed to have forgotten. It was funny, almost, that the only time Light physically hurt him was when they'd been as close to friends as they would ever get.

Funny. Ha. Not really.

"The great L stumbles over his words. At least you admitted it, though. Whew. Thought it was just a guess for a while."

"Everyone stumbles over their words on occasion. I'm human, as you seem to be fond of reminding me."

"You seem to be very fond of forgetting."

"I don't like you."

"Well, that's too bad. I might just haunt you for the next 22 days."

"Please don't. I'd rather not spend my last days on Earth haunted by you."

"Eh, I'll leave after a little while. But I want to know."

L shrugged.

"Well, I don't want to tell you."

"Well, then, I'll just have to guess at the answer."

"I'm going to ignore you."

"Was it... hm. Well, some people liked his looks. Was that it?"

L watched his toes, flexing them and rubbing them against one another.

"How about his... smarts? You're a genius, maybe you identified with that?"

L gritted his teeth, keeping his head low so that the shinigami couldn't see. He was the one that played mind games. He was the great L, cold, calculating. Emotionless. He shouldn't have been feeling like this. He shouldn't have let himself feel like this. He kept his eyes on his toes.

"Oh! I know!" Ryuuk practically sang. "It was the game of it all. You liked the thrill of screwing with his head. But you also wouldn't have minded just plain scr-"

"Please stop." L could feel his heart rate going up in his anger. Well, at least it was still going. 22 days. He was still careful to not look at the shinigami.

"Wow. Pretty... ah, what's it called? Kinky."

"I said, please stop."

Ryuuk grinned at him, but he stopped. L couldn't help feeling that he'd just won the battle but lost the war, though.

"You were a fun one," Ryuuk said finally.

L threw the notebook at him. It bounced off of Ryuuk's chest, prompting a gruff "ouch, you didn't need to throw it so hard," from the shinigami.

"You have your notebook. You can leave."

Ryuuk nodded, grinning at him again. "Like I said before, you're a funny one. You know, I still don't understand you humans. He never knew your name."

"I know."

"Would you have told it to him if he'd asked?"

"No."

"You were right. You are different from her."

"He wouldn't have believed me, even if I'd said the right name."

"Oh! One last thing I wanted to tell you. He was obsessed with you. In a way, maybe he was in love with you, too."

"Obsession is very different from love, though from what I can tell the symptoms are very similar. Amane Misa confused the two, and that was how she ended up the way that she did."

Ryuuk was just screwing with his head, anyway. L almost sighed, but bit his thumbnail instead.

Perhaps now was a good time to eat the cake. Chewing would help disguise his emotions, anyway. He speared a strawberry from his cake on a tiny fork with a ferocity that was only a tiny bit more than necessary, and ate it whole, savoring the dichotomy of sweet and sour in his mouth and then spitting out the leafy bits onto the plate, wiping the juice from his chin with his sleeve. Oops. Now it was pink in spots.

Well, why should he care?

Ryuuk watched with a modicum of fascination.

"Like I said, you're a funny one. Goodbye, Lawliet."

"Goodbye, Ryuuk."

"Good luck, kid." Ryuuk added, in an apparently rare burst of well-wishing, and flew upwards, melting through the ceiling and probably the ceilings of all the other floors above it.

L shut his eyes and rested his forehead on his knees, idly wondering if he should have written down an earlier date.

end.

* * *

So um, I'm pretty new to DN fanfiction. I don't know. I really like it, though, but I usually like easy fluffy stuff and you just can't have that in DN. So my other LxLight story is gonna build up for a while. A long while. Gah. I like writing, but I'm lazy about it. xD I always want to keep my work from dragging along, but then it ends up being boom-boom-boom-story's over, and that's bad, too.

Anyway, I'd really like reviews. I think that I did a good job. -shrugs- But I welcome constructive criticism.


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